


A Royal Duty

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Zenda Novels - Anthony Hope
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Ficlet, Victorian, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:27:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28318212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: The King of Ruritania attends a state funeral in a city with which he's more familiar than he ought to be, and can't help reflecting on the life he leads now and the life he's left behind.(This can be read as an AU which diverges from canon either just before the end of The Prisoner of Zenda or just before the end of Rupert of Hentzau. Either way, that can be assumed to have happened several years before this story.)
Relationships: Flavia/Rudolf Rassendyll
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2020





	A Royal Duty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RDavidson (inklesspen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inklesspen/gifts).



Had I been in London I could have heard the news no sooner. Had I been there, of course, I would have run straight out for a paper, might even have joined the crowd of mourners outside Buckingham Palace. Later, I saw the photographs and imagined myself there.

As it is, the news was in Strelsau as soon as it was in London, and was brought to the palace without my having to go out for it. We had known for a long time that it must come; yet when it did I still found myself shaken, grieving for the monarch I had once served, haunted once more by the impossible decision I had made.

I gave some thought to the expression of regret that must be sent. In the ordinary way my secretary Franz would draft these for me, and he would do a very good job of it. I might have been wiser to let him do this one, too. But some lingering sense of long-gone duty compelled me to write it myself. The Queen who lay now in state in her palace by the sea had once been my Queen; I had once been her loyal soldier; I owed her my own words at the very least.

As for the funeral -

‘Shall you go?’ my own Queen asked me.

I might have said, it would be wiser not to; but long years of deceiving the people I now called my own had left me reasonably confident that my former compatriots would not think to question my identity. Why should they? I could not say, in the old phrase, that my own brother would not know me, but it seemed more than possible that he would not see me to speak to.

How strange it was, to be in London once more! I had all but forgotten the damp, chilly, fog. The squalor and bustle was only a little subdued by the national mood of mourning. My predecessor, my namesake, had had some acquaintance with the city, so I was not bound to pretend total ignorance, but many of my old haunts were now beyond what ought to have been my experience. My English was, of course, rather more fluent than it ought to have been – though I noticed to my own, private, amusement that I had picked up something of a Ruritanian accent.

I had never, of course, been in Westminster Abbey with royalty at each hand, but that, conversely, was an experience that I could not allow to discomfit me. I could not keep myself from gazing over the serried ranks of the British nobility, searching for my brother: and finding him was a grief in itself, for I could hardly have made myself known to him. Some day, perhaps, I shall tell him, or ask some trusted friend to tell him after my death, of how I went to Ruritania, of how I found myself impersonating its king, of how that king was killed through base treachery; and how, to save the country from falling into confusion and violence, I let my sense of duty have mastery over my sense of honour.

I would not have done it, had there been any other way. But ah! was ever unwilling usurper so generously rewarded as I? The kingdom meant little to me – then, at least, though I have strived to repay its unwitting trust in me. But its princess – its queen – _my_ queen – the one person in the world who could have persuaded me to stay – she has ever meant the world itself to me.

Of the journey home I need say little. The Channel crossing was as miserable as one might expect for February; the train a distinct relief. But best by far was alighting from my carriage at the palace in Strelsau to find my own Flavia waiting for me. And at the sight of her dear, lovely face I forgot all the turmoil of my thoughts, my unquiet sense of honour, my inadequate gratitude. All was lost in the joy of reunion.

For truly, any man loved by such a one as she may think himself a king in truth.


End file.
